Former expat, living in Texas after 10 1/2 years in Norway. Trying to decide the next steps. No matter what, the journey never stops. I will always be a traveler.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Screw you, Facebook!

I am SO annoyed with Facebook right now.

I joined Facebook because it was a nice way to stay in touch with my friends, in a PRIVATE way, so that I could control who saw my name and info in a way that I felt comfortable with. I could discuss or post things with my friends and have a little group discussion, but keep it within my group.

Over time, they have eroded some of that privacy, but there was always a way to fix it so that I could keep my full name or information out of the public realm, mostly.

But now they have done some changes that have severely eroded my ability to post things about myself I want to share.

Now, in your profile, if you list an interest (say, hiking) Facebook takes that and makes it a link to a public page where anyone can see your information regarding that topic. So, let's say you listed your favorite TV shows on the interests portion of Facebook. Now you are publicly linked to ALL those TV show 'pages' on Facebook, and you cannot unlink yourself. You CANNOT retain your privacy on that. All you can do is DELETE that information from your Facebook profile!!! That sucks ass in so many ways, it's ridiculous. So I had to spend quite a long time today deleting all my interests (books, movies, TV, hobbies, etc) INDIVIDUALLY from my profile....and they kept coming back!

Also, they have spread their 'like' button all over the web. So if you 'like' an article on CNN, say this one about Facebook, (which you should totally read) a link to that article will show up on your facebook page...even if that is not what you want!!!!! AND you still don't have control over some stuff if your friends are not careful with THEIR information!

From Facebook: "Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application."

I don't WANT a lot of information in my full name on the web. There is a REASON I did not link my blog to FB or vice versa.